Gear & Gadgets —

CES in pictures: the good, the bad, the Elvis

CES 2010 was a much bigger show than last year's depressed affair. Attendance …

CES is a daunting show to cover, filled with emerging technologies, new products hoping to change the world, and a few goofy surprises here and there. What you don't often see is what goes on around the fringes of the show: the products that don't get written about, the booth designs intended to draw your eye and get you to walk in, and the weird tricks companies try to get your attention.

This year every major player wanted you to put on glasses to look at content, you could get your picture taken with Elvis at a few different places, and if you knew were to look you could sit in Captain Kirk's chair. Welcome to our CES, in pictures.

At the Panasonic booth, huge slabs of 3D glasses were brought out to allow patrons to see what few seemed interested in buying. One of the themes of CES this year was the number of plastic glasses you were asked to wear at most booths.

One booth was showing off sniper rifles for the Wii and the PS3. While the Wii accessories had a slot for the controller, the PS3 gun simply added standard Dual Shock controls to a gun body.

Samsung's booth was technically impressive, but rather dizzying to walk through.

"Pleo Lives!" The booth was proud to be showing the robotic dinosaur at CES, and the crowds were likewise happy to see him.

Augmented Reality reared its ugly head. This game uses remote-controlled plastic vehicles with video-equipped controllers for an experience that's part toy, part video game, and way too big for your basement.

The idea behind this product? The ability to see through the clothing of women and take pictures with your cell phone. There was a cardboard cutout wearing a dress, and you could see—right there!—everything beneath it simply by peering through the product. Classy.

Microsoft didn't make a big deal out of its limited 3D offerings, but there was a game for Xbox Live Arcade called Scrap Metal that you could play using the old-style red and blue anaglyph glasses.

Wow, TVs that double as mirrors... hm, what did you say? I can already use my glossy screen on a laptop as a mirror? In that case, I'm not sure why people would want to pay MUCH more for essentially a glossy TV screen that attracts glare even more so if not positioned right. But then these ARE business people they are selling it to, and it seems that they don't care as much for the money aspect... so long as it looks good. Doesn't sound like these businessmen they're hoping to sell it to would have great business sense and financial capabilities.

The idea behind this product? The ability to see through the clothing of women and take pictures with your cell phone. There was a cardboard cutout wearing a dress, and you could see—right there!—everything beneath it simply by peering through the product. Classy.

Why would you look at the cardboard cutout when you could look at female attendees... oh right, it was the CES - never mind. Then again, it was in Las Vegas...

The Samsung TV ius impressive. You guys didn't show the remote which actually looks liek an iphone of sorts and can even play video on it. Very cool. Not sure why someone would need a Tv that thin though. Its just going to be sitting in your living room or your wall. IT would be cool to put in a pimped out car though.

This year every major player wanted you to put on glasses to look at content, you could get your picture taken with Elvis at a few different places, and if you knew were to look you could sit in Captain Kirk's chair.

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iGuGu had some cool products, including a PC gaming controller designed to play games on your HDTV, but their marketing and copy editing were lacking, as demonstrated by this banner over the center of their booth.

That impossibly thin TV unfortunately achieves that thinness by sacrificing the quality of the image. Edge lighting, especially on sets that thin, leads to some nasty, nasty backlight bleed.

Doesn't that impossibly thin TV use an AMOLED screen? Meaning that there is no backlight (or side/edgelight) to speak of. The pixel elements in the screen itself are the light source.

Ah, did't realize they were showing OLED TVs in that size. If it is OLED, disregard what I said - but the blurb in the article just described it as an LED TV and that usually means an LED edge-lit LCD.

Every razor thin LCD on the market right now suffers from the edge lighting problems I was discussing earlier and misses out on the advantages that LED backlighting offers over CCFL. Local dimming LED clusters as actual backlights instead of edge lighting is the way to go with LCD TVs at the moment.

Those mirror TVs are not new. Traveling around Ireland 4 years ago I saw a couple of them in high end hotels. When the TV is off it is a really good mirror, and if you put a frame around it you can pretend that the room doesn't have a TV in it at all.

I can't talk too much about the picture quality, but from what I recall with my brief experience, the picture quality was fine. However, the only thing I was doing was getting the weather report, not watching dark movies or anything like that.

That "X-Ray" camera sounds a whole lot like the "X-Ray" camcorders from a few years ago, where people were using a filter designed for night time use during the day and discovering that it could see through thin fabrics somewhat. People who are really interested could probably search Google for plenty of examples, but somehow I suspect these will be just about as disappointing as the X-Ray specs of our youth.

Originally posted by grimlog:No. Augmented Reality is. It's the hot thing within the gaming/animation world (developer side).

What I meant was that the industry is pushing hard with consumer products and hype despite the vast majority of consumers having a negative reaction to the actual experience. 3D is a neat effect, but the overall image quality suffers and it can be a distraction. It seems "3D-Ready" TVs don't add much cost, so they will probably sell well. I suspect the sales of actual glasses will be poor and usage will be worse...

As far as I have seen, Augmented Reality hasn't yet escaped the research/demo phase in any big way, and I doubt the average consumer has any awareness of it.

A few companies were hawking TVs that double as mirrors. These are primarily aimed at hotels and restaurants, but there's nothing stopping you from ordering one for your living room if you have money to burn.

Or you could do like most of us who have them do and put them in your bathroom as part of a larger mirror. Makes watching the news while the wife takes a bath, or we get ready in the morning, a snap and when turned off it's just a part of the mirror that you don't notice at all. They aren't really that new and have been around awhile now.

iGuGu had some cool products, including a PC gaming controller designed to play games on your HDTV, but their marketing and copy editing were lacking, as demonstrated by this banner over the center of their booth.

iGuGu is overflowing with fail, from the sloppy banner to their product concept. There's already numerous ways to play games on your HDTV, they're called consoles!